


We Reject Our Earthly Fires

by nachttour



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures, MSPA
Genre: Altered Mental States, Animal Death, Anthropomorphism - Freeform, Body Horror, F/F, Grimdark, Light Bondage, Non-Cannon-Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-09
Updated: 2014-01-09
Packaged: 2018-01-07 22:54:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,847
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1125360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nachttour/pseuds/nachttour
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Questionably dead and floating in the sea of neverwhere Rose Lalonde wakes up in confusion. Shortly rescued by one Jade Harley what is to happen after that is the challenge they face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Reject Our Earthly Fires

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Stripe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stripe/gifts).



Prior to opening her eyes, Rose had not dreamt.

The stillness surrounding her could have taken a breath’s width or an eternity and the two would have been indistinguishable.

The last memory she possessed was of screaming, her throat straining and raw, accompanied by the mindless fury that had inspired the noise. Even as she had done it, in the abstract she considered the futility of making a sound to halt horror and pain. Screaming was a last-ditch request for help from ancestors and family that could not come to her because they were all gone-a consequence of her actions. Trying to recall the inspiration for her fury was like grasping for a single grain of sand on a beach. Trying to find one particular grain was as ludicrous as attempting to drink the entirety of a sea.

Now that she had woken it was dim in contrast to what she could remember from before. There was no pressure on her from any given direction, so logic dictated that she must be floating. Opening her eyes wider she found this to be true. The water she inhabited was fathomless from the middle distance where she hovered. No bottom lay visible below her and above her there were only stars.

Prior to the stillness she had been thinking about the game and its mechanics. Something about the horrorterrors. More grains of memory slid between her fingers and away from her, lost to the indistinct seafloor.

Unfortunately for all of them, there was no game FAQ for Sburb. It was an issue that Rose personally addressed but ultimately proved unsuccessful at. Even if there had been, there was no reasonable way that any young person could read and grasp the vast implications participation warranted and then continue forward with a clear head.

Why it was that the game always chose children plagued her, even in her volatile and half-sleeping state. The persistent lack of knowledge jabbed into her temple like a taunting needle-- a small, nagging pain. Their session had been too broken to ever grant edification on the matter, so she remained troublingly shrouded in ambiguity.

Instead of pondering the imponderable-- poetic as it might sound --she settled in the cold light granted by the stars and watched. Skirts,tendrils, and tentacles all formed a roiling mass beneath her folded feet. No fish swirled around her, no crustaceans scuttled beneath her. Certainly no marine mammals were in sight. 

They had lost her session, lost terribly. Dave was the first; the time loops that he had so gracefully navigated collapsed around him like a choke-collar. Then Jade, their embodied paradox of space had been crushed to death. Supposedly she went next, though maybe John preceded her. That one small detail has escaped her from the first moment of opening her eyes and realizing that she now lived in a world of shifting tentacles and whispers. Conceivably she now inhabited the stellar equivalent to the Cambrian sea, or else her half-animate body had sunk down to the abyssal plains of the oceans of LOLAR and she would now dwell as a horror-story whispered to her consorts as they awaited their next heroine.

Such thinking was hubris. The chill permeating her body was deeper and more rich than anything that her ocean ever would grant her. The winking bioluminescence of those that drifted around her did not belong on her populous world of twinkling rain.

"If I am not home then where am I?"

 _ **'Home'**_ The jellyfish drifting by in a cloud around her echoed it back in a whispered chorus.

“I am sure that this is no such place." For all that the words arranged themselves quietly in a line in her head, they came out in a stilted, groaning cadence. Speaking in complete sentences put pain between her eyes and strained her throat like thumbs pressing between her tendons. Screaming seemed almost refreshing in comparison. Darting a hand out sideways she captured one of the moon jellies, drawing it over and grinding it between her teeth, hearing its ineffectual squeals of pleasure and protest, silently appreciating the stinging of its tendrils at her mouth.

If this was home then she had returned to the place where her nightmares originated from. Particles rushed past her eyes and her hair danced to the direction of the currents supporting herself and horde of muttering invertebrates. Pushing up toward the light felt like pushing herself willfully onto downward facing knives. Necessary though, this pain felt terribly necessary. If living meant hurting then she desired it, the twang and spark in her nerves that indicated she could still feel. The thorns sat electric-warm and solid in her hands. Out of everything she had recently experienced, their presence was undeniable.

Breaking the surface felt like willfully hurling herself from a skyscraper. Exhilarating and then horrible. The light that bathed her face was only moonlight, and yet her tentacles knotted and snapped under her, telegraphing distress that she did not comprehend. There was nothing wrong with being out of the water; and yet it felt as if she had done the most unsafe and vulnerable thing ever. Not safe in the shallows. Exposed when she was not hidden away in her void-cradle.

This was not home, being in the open air.

The sky above her stretched impossibly high. There was no atmospheric distortion, only stars upon stars. Focusing her eyes only showed her more. A passing squid brushed along her legs, tentacles twining briefly with hers. A swarm bloomed beneath her, flashing and strobing in the moonlight. Overlaid by reflected stars in the strange sea they floated in.

_**'We belong in the in between spaces.'** _

_**'Betwixt'** _

_**'Between'** _

_**'Yes between.'** _

_**'Stay between breaths with us Rose.'** _

_**'Oh Rose.'** _

_**'Welcome home.'** _

_**"** _ **This isn't right.** _**"** _

_**'Welcome home.'** _

_**'Beloved.'** _

_**'Terror.'** _

_**'Destroyer.'** _

" _NO THIS ISN'T RIGHT!_ " Her voice cracked with frustration and confusion, ink slid and feathered out from her teeth and the taste of salt and blood tinted her expression. The swarm drifted around her like a cloud, a flickering miasma of red and white. Kicking and thrashing in her skirts she growled her fury, pointing the thorns down to scatter the bloom in a crack of coldly severe light. Instead of acting as a living, flashing cloak they scattered, still strobing.

The surface offered her no answers and a growing migraine. Letting herself relax and slip back beneath the waves, the starlight above her distorted, shifting and waving with the movement on the surface. The patterns of light stood in sharp relief to her tinted skin; gray was not a usual shade for her but showcased the starlight fantastically.

Sliding deeper, the pressure around her made her ears pop. It felt like being hugged by pure ice, held tight like the most trusted and dearest lover. The whispers stayed above her and the light faded in gradients until the sole sources of illumination were the thorns and a dim glow around her own eyes.

_What am I?_

Her personal chorus seemed to be on a smoke break or rehearsing their next lines. They did not come back to tell her.

_Where am I?_

Somewhere in the deep, that much was certain. Lights winked and glittered far below, further into the crushing abyss. It was doubtful that anything good lingered that far down, and yet her descent continued unabated. Wiggling around her like a bed of kelp, her skirts flirted with passing sea-life and tickled at her skin, flaring out in her liquid environment. Certainly, there was nothing that she could do to stop this. The cold-quiet was her home. The chorus returned to affirm this.

**'Come down.'**

**'Come down to us beloved.'**

**'Hold you lights and wait for the next.'**

‘ **You've tried so hard.’**

‘ **It’s okay. You can rest now.’**

‘ **Be with us.’**

‘ **With us Rose.’**

Looking around showed her the truth. The voices shifted, sometimes various monolithic glittering invertebrates and sometimes other players – kids that she could not have even dreamed up had she the imagination to try. Various god-tier raiment fluttered in the currents. Orange like hers, blues, greens, yellows and other hues disappeared into the murky water. Symbols that she had not encountered caught in collective luminescence. Throwing her hands above her she groaned, fruitlessly kicking away from this. The cold was a tomb. A place where all of the mistakes and the unfinished went to lie in wait, serving as a warning for those that were foolish enough to succeed as much as they had.

' _I don't want to go here. I don't want to be in a drowned mausoleum. If I have to be here after-death let it be somewhere better, somewhere that I can watch the clouds passing by-'_ Hands locked themselves around her own, nails sharp enough to be claws dug into the points of her wrists under paper-thin gray flesh. Fur and warm skin brushed against her, piercing her ice-shroud. Reflections of the player-jellyfish skittered and danced off of glasses before the pressure abruptly changed.

Rose found herself on dry land, shuddering violently sitting next to an equally drenched young woman.

Jade.

Affection and surprise clogged her throat, ensuring that her words would not pass. Instead her tentacles slithered and swished under her skirts, causing the whole mass to flop crazily, smacking into the frost-covered ground with moist crunches. Jade stood at a middle distance, ears arched up like two gate-posts, interested and alert. The red of her shoes looked like blood against the panorama of white that they stood in, and the wind tugged at her hood and the tattered edges of her skirt. Much like herself, Jade had the gray-tinted skin and a sheen of white over her eyes, vaguely emanating from behind the round panes of her glasses.

“How?”

Away from the swarm of supernatural sea life words came easier. There was still a reverberating quality to them, and black ink dripped along her lips and from the corners of her mouth. It felt uncomfortably like drooling. Still, this was a marked improvement from before. The light simultaneously was piercing and a relief to look at.

Jade stepped forward, the warmth of her skin inferno-like against the chill of her planet. “We died. I think.”

Pressing forward and nuzzling her cheek against Rose’s she stepped in close, locking her arms around her waist and breathing in sharply against her neck. Rose could see the dots of freckles on her cheek and the faint trace of the warm brown that Jade’s skin should have been. Against the sensitive length of her neck she could feel Jade’s mouth pull down into a frown. “You smell like brine. Brine and desolation. I don't think that's a good scent for you. And I have to say the Ophelia-look isn't working very well either.” Her attempt at humor fell flat, and Rose watched the muscles in her jaw work as her powerhouse of a mind addressed their current situation. It was sort of cute how her ears pinned down, further articulating her displeasure at the strangeness of their predicament.

“I found you. I could hear them all talking and I knew that you needed to be found. I found you and now I don’t know what to do. I don’t know why we’re here. The last thing that I remember was being near the forge.” A whining note of anxiety punctuated the last part of her statement. She did not further articulate what she remembered and Rose did not press. It was not a pleasant memory to return to. Instead Rose brought a hand up, stroking a damp hand over the crown of her head, tracing down the backs of her ears. The texture was surprisingly silky in contrast with jumbled waves of Jade’s hair. It invited a repetition of the movement which she completed, resting her chin on the solid slope of her shoulder and regarding the hazy distance. Slowly she wrapped her tendrils forward, encasing them.

“We’re dead. I don’t know what happens now. Regrettably my vision remains murky on the subject.” After the strange limbo that she had begun in, it was a relief to see a familiar face.

“I have no idea why we are even here. Is this a dream bubble? Or...?” She hoped that she was not getting ink? Blood? Ectoplasm? Whatever it was that she was oozing, she prayed it was not seeping into Jade's clothes. If it was, her space player did not seem concerned by it.

Jade had no useful thoughts on the subject, staying wound close and surveying the sounds around them – her ears rotating furiously as she tracked things beyond Rose's auditory comprehension.

“I think that this is what happens when god-tiers die?”

Apparently satisfied that nothing interesting was coming for them, Jade's ears settled into neutral-position. Brushing her cheek and nose along Rose's face she peeked out of the corner of her eyes at her.

“We can do anything that we want. What do you want to do?”

Well then.

That certainly was not a query that had been put to her any time recently or given any thought. What did she want to do when there was no overriding directive on what ought be done?

She wanted to find her friends.

She wanted to wrap Kanaya up in her arms. Again? For the first time? Her sense of what was the present and what was not was suffering a severe blurring. It was like she was drinking meteor-moonshine or dreaming vividly and attempting linear thought while doing so. They were dead so forward and backward had no relevance any longer. Simply she could do as she wished, scream herself hoarse and none of it would have any impact at all. Like flies in amber they were enshrined in their failure to become gods, little specimens serving as warning for others that would come after.

The best option would be to act as an escort to Jade, walking through the frost of LOFAF, where the cold seemed unable to bite her and the whispers of the oceanic dead were not nearly so clamorous. Movement almost belied the truth of their demise. Dead things did not move. From the time she was a very tiny girl Rose had understood that much about the world. Generally speaking, what had passed remains gone.

What else did she desire?

Death. Flesh. Power. The feeling of liquid and blood pouring down her throat and a chorus of crunching carapace and bone. The little brushes of a thousand jellyfish and other dark-dwellers as they floated en masse.

Right at the moment she coveted the attentive power of Jade's usually-green eyes fixed solely on her. The more she considered, the greater the galaxy of her inclinations grew.

Assuming that they might find him, she wanted to jab Dave in the ribs with her needles and then tickle him until he snort-laughed away any pretense that he was anything other than a pretentious dweeb in medieval-themed pajamas.

Even more nebulously she wanted John, to scuffle his stupid hair and join him in general tomfoolery. They could knot together, the four of them. Solidify with proximity what the game had already decreed. “I want my team back together. Also, I want to stay with you. Additionally, I want the girl who was so worried for me via impossible-intergalactic-internet to not worry any longer. Furthermore, I wish to not have to worry at all myself. I want everything.”

Jade shook her head, body articulating compassionate apology in pure gesture. “I can't find the trolls. I think that's a good thing, actually. They didn't die. Or else if they did die, they went somewhere that isn't here. Which given all of the wailing damned that I pulled you free from, that's probably good right?”

Rose absorbed the statement and understood that she ought to feel something. One of her tentacles found a rock and whapped it dully against the ground. The thuds of impact rocked her slightly.

Many things could be blamed for her non-response, including the strangeness of her awakening, the ichor dripping and dribbling down her chin, or her departure from the mortal coil. Still, regardless of causal links, the apathy remained. Kanaya had been very useful and it was highly evident that the alien girl had cared for her. They had been close in their travels.

However, if she was not here-wherever here was- then there was no sense in pining. Beyond that, all of the ink crowding and filling her acted as an analgesic. It was not a far stretch to consider that it might be leeching away all of her soft parts and replacing her insides with ice. It certainly seemed that she ought to have paid more attention to the grimoire when it had been in her possession – it most certainly would have been edifying regarding such matters.

Instead she faced an orgy of choices regarding the direction of her life's path and no indicators on which movement would make the most sense. Jade had tucked her head under her chin during her contemplation, quietly drawing her tongue in warm little stripes against her clavicle. Making no move to stop her, Rose peered down to see Jade's expression: eyes half closed in pleasure and lashes flirting with the fullness of her cheeks.

“Perhaps not the best plan. I don't know if I'm poisonous.”

'We're already dead. It doesn't matter.” Jade chuckled, continuing her exploration of Rose's chest, clearing away little dribbles of black. “You taste kind of salty. And then there's this burn right after. It's interesting.”

Concluding her exploration she stepped back. “We should go to my tower. It's still here. It's less snowy. And I have a big bathtub that you can float in.”

One of the perks of having Jade god tiered was ease of transportation. One moment they were discussing it, the next minute they stood inside of the tower. Windows hung open and the base-level door had fallen off of its hinges, sadly buried in a layer of snow. However, the upper levels seemed to be more intact. Gliding up the stairs Rose's attention wavered. Base floor. Ninth floor, where Jade scampered off to go and get something and then returned to her side. Top floor. The cold wrapped around them like a third presence, grudgingly chased out as Jade closed windows and turned on a heating element in the corner. Opening the door to a side space, a bathtub sat waiting, filled with water artfully dribbling over the sides into catching trays before disappearing off and into a wall. Gravitating toward it like a woman compelled, Rose pushed herself into the tub, hissing. Her skin was cracked and peeling from standing out in the cold and the dry, and some of her tentacles were bleeding. This water did not feel right, salt would make everything better.

Jade seemed a step ahead of her, returning from the door on the opposite side of her room with a box. Carefully measuring a few portions of a variety of things, the ache along Rose's skin gradually subsided. Coiling her tentacles and toes in pleasure she sunk beneath the water, watching Jade from beneath the surface. This was good.

*

The second awakening of note happened during a time of no moon. Throwing her arms out to the side to ward off the owners of the voices clamoring around her she met the sides of the tub and jammed her wrist painfully against the porcelain. Cursing, she eased herself up out of her sleeping place to find Jade curled up nude in a nest of blankets, one bare shoulder exposed where they had dipped down. At the sounds of her splashing her companion looked up, eyes glittering like two white nebulae in the shadows.

“You make really weird sounds when you sleep. I just want you to know that. You creak. And you scream sometimes. Submerged screaming is nightmare fuel. It may also summon my old consorts so I slept in here with you in case I needed to stop you. You seem to be done with that, so we're good for now. Don't be surprised if I shake you though. We don't want them to find us. They're messed up. I think when I died something went bad.”

Not inclined to further elaborate Jade leaned on her folded elbows, observing her.

Rose no longer felt the torpor that had overcome her before. When the black came there were no dreams. Just silence until she returned to the present moment. Flexing her fingers they cracked and popped.

“Come here, for I am desirous of living company and tired of aquatic phantoms.” They always were whispering. At odd intervals she caught herself worrying her ears with sharpened nails, scratching and rubbing. Trying to get the sensation of lips against her skin to vanish. Old, clotted blood ran down her neck from these irritations, adding to her general sense of bodily discomfort.

“You have to come down here. I'm not getting in the salt-water with you.”

Jade rolled over, generous breasts nestled comfortably against her biceps and the soft curve of her stomach overlit by the glow of their eyes. Following the topography of her beautiful curves Rose marveled at the little valley of black curls and the suppleness of her thighs, even when overlaid in manic-gray. It was an invitation to touch and adore – to be something other than a screaming snarl of emotion and matter. Sliding over to kneel next to Jade’s head she carefully took her clunky glasses off of her face, folding them just-so and setting them to one side. Pressing a forefinger to her lips she traced along their soft curve.

“Be mine. Hunt for me. Find for me. Listen to me. Would you do that?”

Jade grinned up at her, feral and bleary-eyed from the removal of her eye-wear. “I’ll be yours and you’ll be mine. You direct me and I’ll chase away your phantoms and make them behave. There are far too many tentacles going on here.”

Rose followed the path of Jade’s eyes as the prone girl tracked one of the mentioned apendages in its aimless journey around the tiled floor. Idly the witch snapped at another investigating her mouth and it pulled itself away to safety, skulking back into the gloom of her skirts. Satisfied, Jade glanced back up at her.

“We all belong to each-other anyway, wouldn't you say?” Her ears tipped up in delight, and Rose could not swear on it, but there seemed to be a bit of a joyful wiggle to her hips.

“Simply by virtue of the fact of the game and everything that we have seen and done.” Stretching her hands up over her head to stroke her fingertips along the soft inner parts of Rose’s arms she grinned, flashing fangs.

“You're too cold. Get out of all of that wet shit and come and lay down with me.”

Skepticism overwhelmed her at the suggestion. The chill seemed to have written itself into her skin like a tattoo. However, it was hard to tell Jade no. The inviting quirk of her brows and the half-wild smile plastered over her mouth was enough. Pulling and tugging at the zippers of her gown she slid free of the mess and returned to herself. Glancing down there were no tentacles. Only her toes and gray-tinted tracts of skin. The polish on her toenails had chipped, and at some point she would have to redo it. Cozying up against Jade felt like laying on a fire. It burned against her skin fiercely, their points of connection throbbing. Jade observed with ears perked forward at attention and flickering eyes. Licking under her chin she smiled and settled close, winding her arms around the small point of Rose's waist.

“Tomorrow. We'll hunt them. The boys. I want all of us together. If we have to be dead and we have to be scary, I want to be horrors together. You were thinking the same thing, weren't you?”

Pressing her lips against the wiry strands of Jade's curls, she nodded. “Yesss,” Even divorced from the oddity of her waking shape Rose could not completely push back the strange tonal fluctuations and odd shifts in affect that she had developed. Much like a mirror fogging up and then clearing, sometimes she felt more lucid, other times it felt like tendrils were brushing the back of her throat and gagging her. Jade coiled against her, all of her soft points infinitely more inviting than the blankets surrounding them. All she wanted to do was have her. Keep her close so that she would never disappear. “I want to bite your mouth.” Very smooth, Lalonde.

“I think you're tired and cold. It'll be better when you warm up.” Jade's voice still carried warm honey and preemptive laughter within every syllable. “Cuddle up. Let me take care of you.”

Rose wound her thigh between Jade's, pressing her mouth against her temple. “It's my job.” The intensity of her voice belied the gaping void hiding behind her ribs where her normal thoughts and feelings usually kept residence.

“But that's what good pets do. We guard, and seek, and we nuzzle.” Growling softly, Jade adjusted herself. The tips of her ears tickled against Rose's jaw. “So let me take care of you. Before we go hunting tomorrow I have a tracking collar. I would appreciate your help in getting it on. When I'm alone I get lost, it's harder for me to focus. I need you to hold the end of my tether and make sure that I get home. Can you do that for me?”

The idea tightened parts of her that had not been attended to of since her furtive masturbatory attempts on the meteor. A collar would sit beautifully on her throat, right along the strong lines of her neck and nestled carefully against the slope of her shoulders. Digging her fingers into Jade's hips she nodded, crushing her close. “Yes.” The raggedness of her tone had nothing to with the tentacles, and everything to do with desire.

Rubbing her hands up along Rose's stomach, Jade grinned. “I bet you taste good everywhere. I'll find out tomorrow. For now, hold onto me. I need to rest. There will be a lot of jumping. This place is full of static and dead spots. When I pass through it, I loose myself a little.”

Hardly able to settle Rose wound herself tight around her living inferno, considering the possibilities that 'tomorrow' could bring. Unsure that time was still a process and construct that still existed. It was nonsensical to assume that its linear nature was still applicable to those that were no longer susceptible to its ravages. The quiet of the bathroom gradually filled up with whispers.

_**'Come down.'** _

_**'Come back.'** _

_**'That is not where you belong.'** _

_**'Let the witch drift.'** _

_**'She will come down too.'** _

_**'She can come down.'** _

_**'Bring her down Rose.'** _

_**'Everyone.'** _

_**'All things come down.'** _

_**'All things stop.'** _

Jabbing her nails into her ears she dug in, the dull sounds of her skin giving blocking out the whispers. Jade caught her hands and held them, tucking them over her ribs and trapping them under her own. “Shhh. Just go to sleep.”

Rose closed her eyes as her invisible cadre murmured their disapproval.

*

The light of dawn spilled cold over her chest. Laying on her back with Jade curled over and around her like the world's most adorable puppy she carded a hand into her hair. There was a lot of it and it was bouncy and wild, beautiful just like Jade was. For laying on a floor she felt surprisingly comfortable. Stretching her legs out she felt her knees and toes pop and smiled, burbling in pleasure. Only a little bit of ink passed the corner of her mouth and she swiped at it with the back of her hand. Collars. No more vocal sea-life. Finding their friends. Finding out what Jade's face looked like in the height of pleasure. These were all things on the forefront of her thoughts.

“Jade?”

Grumbling, the witch rolled over, flashing her gorgeous chest and the equally divine rest of her before wiggling and stretching, ears tipped forward affectionately.

“Morning mistress of the deep. You get any rest?” The light fluctuation of her eyes had calmed down exponentially from their first meeting.

“A little. I don't quite have the horror-voice as badly. And I can feel differences in temperature and texture. Still gray, but no active extra limbs. I would say that I have stood some improvement.” Summoning up a smile for her, Rose tucked some of her curls off of her face and offered over her glasses, delicately balanced on a tendril summoned from the knot of them hiding under her. She had spoken too soon on that subject. Her extra extremities had made a reappearance; but, they seemed to be composed mostly of shadow unless she paid attention to one in particular and gave it a task. What that meant, she was not entirely certain. At least they were not sprouting off of her hips any longer.

Jade stood up, delogging a big hoodie with Dave’s symbol emblazoned on the back and a black one with hers, handing it down. “Much as I enjoy ogling you like an internet pervert I think I need to catch us something to eat, then we should get looking. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be coherent.” Rose tucked herself into the oversize sweatshirt, watching Jade walk into her room and return with a box, offering it over with a flourish.

“If you would do me the pleasure?”

Opening the box, Rose found a well-crafted collar. The leather was sturdy but lined in softer material that would not chafe. A substantial D-ring graced the front of it and a small light blinked in matched cadence with the neatly-curled leash sitting next to it. Picking it up to observe more closely Rose found a small transistor attached to the lead. Bringing the accessory out she faced Jade, feeling a flutter of anticipatory nervousness. “Hair off your neck.”

Complying flawlessly Jade swept her curls up and back, watching Rose with peaceful stillness. At the accessory fitted into place a tiny smile crossed her mouth. “Good. Thank you. I feel safer knowing that there is someone on the other side that can find me.”

‘ **Drag her.’**

‘ **Pull her Rose.’**

‘ **Let her go where she must.’**

‘ **Come home.’**

‘ **Bring her with you. You won’t be lonely.’**

‘ **Always together.’**

Pinching herself hard enough that the abused skin turned bloodless, Rose shuddered, focusing on the bright stinging pain instead of the voices. Jade tipped her chin up, knocking their foreheads together. “I need you to stay with me please. I need your full attention. You are the hunt-mistress. When you call, I come. So I need you with me.”  Pressing her mouth briefly to Rose’s she smiled.

“You’re the one holding my lead. I trust you.”

Silently Rose brought the leash up and clipped it on, giving it a firm tug. Jade rocked slightly with the pull and grinned at her. “See? I knew you were the right person to put in charge. You know what to do. Hold tight and don’t let go.”

Rose wiggled her bare toes against the tiles and smiled. “That, I can do.”

*

The first day of the hunt they checked LOFAF. The details of their session grew more nebulous the more time that passed and both of them suffered bouts of wildness. Sometimes Jade bayed, staring straight up into the stars like she might leave and never return again. Other times Rose’s hands shook and her vision swam as her skirts and tendrils lashed and waved around her.

Jade’s warning about her consorts proved pertinent. The iguanas scaled down walls and lounged on the trees, inexplicably active and very hostile. They did not seem to consider Jade theirs anymore and frequently gave chase, falling out of the trees in an attempt to smother with their sticky toes. Often this led to bouts of consort-murder about which neither of them felt particularly bad. The crunch of bones and the light reflecting off of flying and bloodied scales made Rose giggle, wet fits of delight that would not subside.

The second day of the hunt took them to LOHAC, which seemed the appropriate choice when seeking Dave. The beat mesa lay cracked and blasted, scorched and oxidized metal still reeking from when it was effected. The air around LOHAC drove Jade to distraction. Sometimes she would wind back and forth, in a game-flushing motion only to stop and scream in frustration. Popping from gear to gear, and scaffolding to scaffolding they flitted above the cooling magma that had previously acted as the burning surface of the world. There was no sign of Dave, only the occasional consort that nattered and nakked at them. Some aggressed, but most seemed dazed and shuffled about, sliding in and out of the few remaining liquid pools of lava.

Rose pulled up pearl-lined gloves to her elbows, drawing Jade’s lead up sharp to stop her from getting too far ahead. Based on something to do with space-player mechanics the lead disappeared into the air at a certain point, appearing again near Jade where it was solidly attached. Snapping her fingers decisively, Rose spoke. “Jade. Come back. We’re done here.”

Wheeling on the gear that she occupied, every line in Jade’s body communicated defiance and anger. Around them the air glittered and crackled with distortion. If it were not for the cracking and groaning of the heated metal around them and the slow sounds of the magma, Rose held no doubt that she would be hearing growls.

“When I said come, I mean COME.” Yanking hard Rose waited. Jade winked back into being at her side, hair bristled up in fury. The hard lines of her tendons against the skin of her hands indicated how badly she wanted to fight. Rose was having none of it. Turning and staring directly into Jade’s face she found her voice the most level it had been in a while.

“You asked me to keep you safe. I am honoring our agreement. There is nothing here to find other than sad, very demented consorts and death. We are leaving, now.” Winding the lead around her balled hand until it was taut once more, Rose turned. “I will not ask you again. Come.”

Ears flush against her skull and lip curled up into a growling snarl, Jade followed, just barely maintaining slack on the lead. Hitting the portals they went through the network until returning to the tower. Appearing in Jade’s bedroom, Rose turned and looked at her.

“Sit.”

To her surprise and pleasure, her witch did as asked, coming to settle on her knees next to her feet. Looking up at her the frequency of the light flashing behind her eyes had returned to pulsing. Nothing about the furious confusion crowding across her features belonged there. Stroking her to soothe, Rose drew Jade against her knees. “You’re fine. It’s okay. We’re home now. Tell me what’s got you all agitated”

Jade pressed her nose against Rose’s palm, whining softly, her words coming slowly. “I could smell him. I swear to  you, I could. I kept seeing him out of the corner of my eye. I know his smell really well. But just when I thought I’d find him, I’d find some burnt out body or discarded clothing. And yet I could still smell him. I swear to you that he was alive-”

Catching her face between her hands, Rose brushed her thumbs along her cheeks. “That’s Dave. You were probably smelling paradox-clones. We’ll find our alpha eventually. We’ll try LOWAS tomorrow, okay?”

Pressing quiet kisses against Rose’s hands, Jade closed her eyes and took a steadying breath. “Okay”

*

LOHAC had been difficult, seeing the various consorts and traces of Dave left here and there. LOWAS was worse. The oil slicks covering the rivers and waterways of the world ran thick and dark like chemical pus. The consorts that were not completely covered in it shuffled and swayed, oblivious to what occurred around them. It crusted around their eyes and made them stumble. Jade stopped one of them, kneeling down and wiping its face until it could track her movements and statements. It made vague bubbling statements about Typhus, curses, and abandonment to wobble away once more.

Jade stood and looked at Rose, shrugging a little. “It’s worth a try, I suppose?”

The jump to the denizen’s place was static-filled. Jade winked into being snarling and staring, hackles raised along her neck. Rose brought her to heel and proceeded into the organ-room. The instrument stretched upward for stories, impossibly huge and equally impossible to play by any other person than a hero who could control wind.

“John’s not here, is he?”  Half of her had been hoping that it would be this easy. They could find their fellow ghost-buddy and disappear and continue on their hunt of the rare and elusive alpha-Dave. Instead the organ sounded like it was suffering, the winds of the planet making the unused pipes moan and howl. It was a symphony befitting the slow-poisoning of a world. Jade pressed up against her back, herding her away from the markings that indicated they would go deeper toward the denizen.

“I suppose you’re right about that. I can’t imagine that one of the demiurge would be of willing assistance to ghosts and terrors.” Jade growled at the door, backing Rose bodily away from it. The pipes wailed in the background, agreeing.

“Are we thinking home then?” Rose kept a firm hand on Jade’s lead, maintaining a soothing level of tension without throwing off her balance. Just because the companions earlier had been wobbly and puzzled, it did not follow that the ones guarding Typhus would be in the same state. Following the winding hallways of the organ-hall they stopped in a temple, the breath symbol sending distorted reflections to lay over them.

Jade stared up and at the cracked glass. “Yes. I think.” Words came back slow sometimes for both of them, stress only made it worse.

“I miss his stupid face, y’know?”  Jade’s face was meditative as she looked up into the light, thick lashes flirting with her freckles struggling to be seen under the gray-wash that covered the both of them. “When I was with him all the time I was about ready to break his neck just to get some peace and quiet. Now? I miss him so bad it's almost like a cliché out of one of his stupid movies. I don't want to let any of you go again. That's why it was so good finding you.” Stepping out of the circle of light Jade returned to her, winding her arms around Rose's and kissing her neck softly.

“All right hunt-mistress. I've lost my scent and I'm tired and grumpy. You gotta redirect me.”

Rose tucked arms firmly around her, circling to rest on the small of her back. “Home. Warm bath for the both of us. We try my planet tomorrow.” The glitter-distortion from LOHAC was starting to shimmer and flicker here and there around them. Its presence made jumping terrifyingly difficult on Jade and Rose felt disinclined to linger.

*

The fourth day was the wost day.

Her planet stood as a shrine to rage.

Everything lay leveled. Corpses of consorts littered the beaches, some in the final stages decomposition and tangled in the glittering kelp beds, others bleached and laid out in the sand. The beaches slowly were reclaiming the skeletons, and their bones no longer lay in orderly piles. Jade sneezed, arching a brow at her. “I never quite figured out why it was that you had to wreck everything.”

Rose let some of the technicolor sand slip through her fingers, the wind blowing it out and away. “I really don't know anymore.” It had made sense at the time. The lead looped gracefully around her wrist, Rose traveled alongside Jade, their feet leaving shallow indents in the shifting sand. “I don't know what we would find here, really. Frankly, I haven't wanted to come. I couldn't tell you why. Just generalized angst.” There were strange patterns in the sand behind her, where her tendrils were beginning to become manifest. They left a swirling, distorted pattern in her wake, blurring her footsteps out of existence.

Jade shot her a look, shrugging. “It could be that the trepidation is a mark in the right direction? Do you remember how you died?” It was a bit of a sore subject between the pair of them. Jade had woken up after their trip to LOHAC in the grip of terrors, shoving at blankets and furiously trying to escape invisible confinement. Rose had not asked, and Jade did not want to talk about it – instead choosing to lay on top of Rose and outside of the blankets for the rest of the evening.

Rose slid the thorns into her hands, twirling them slowly, feeling the familiar weight against her palms. “No. I don't remember. I remember being furious. I remember screaming and thinking that screaming was stupid. That is all I remember. And then I was in the water. And then I was with you. Where did you find me, Jade?”  Yet another neglected topic.

To her credit Jade paused only a moment before glancing over to her. “The furthest ring. Out in the terror-corpses.”

“Ah.”

**'Home.'**

“Shut up.”

Jade tilted her head. “Sorry you didn't want to be there. I didn't want you to be there either.”

Rose waved a dismissive hand. “Not you. I'm haunted by dead jellyfish. Or players. Or eldrich-horrors. Really whatever your interpretation is.”

Jade wiggled her fingers in front of Rose's eyes. “It somehow is unsurprising that your brain is full of tentacles.”

Rose squinted closed hard as something passed through her frame of vision, blurry pressure just behind her eyeball. “You might be closer to the truth on that than you would be comfortable knowing.”

Jade shrugged a little, ears out to either side almost comically. “If you are full of tentacles, I'm full of sparks. Poisoned by the green sun.” The static-crackle of her makes a bit more sense in that context. “We're both a little fucked up. We just have to find the rest of our fucked up teammates and then the afterlife is our playground.”

Thinking of all of the floating faces in the water, Rose shivered. What if that was where they were headed. The grouping instinct serving as some bizarre cleanup function of the game, rather than actual affection. Putting it from her mind she turned to find herself butted up against a body. Dave Strider's precisely: a year younger and three inches shorter than he should have been stared up at her in a mixture of temporal exhaustion and existential horror.

“Fuck dude. I'm in the wrong timeline. Again. I don't know how I keep fucking this up. Rose. I'm sorry.”

His doofy Ben Stiller sunglasses sat askew on his face, and the lack of color in his face had nothing to do with grimdarkness and everything to do with his overwhelmed state. His pulse hammered against the skin of his neck, and she could envision his eyes darting quickly around behind the tinted lenses, trying to find the best possibility for escape. Behind him, the air further distorted and a her Dave stepped out – pajamas torn from claw marks and bullet holes, time decks hovering near him like talismans of a minor deity. This one was the right height, had the right bearing. One of the lenses on his glasses had cracked and the air around him danced and crackled with the static-distortion that Jade hated. The witch was fearless, coming around to stand squarely in front of her, body-language aggressive and alert. The younger copy turned to face the elder, horrified.

“I did what we talked about! I'm trying to find a way to fix it. You said that we had to do this, and then you've been stalking me like you've got a problem. You need to chill dude. We're gonna just worsen the paradox.”

Pulling a sword free from his modus the younger Dave squared up his stance, getting ready to fight. “I think you know you're not in the alpha timeline anymore, bro. You've gotta stop this. It's not cool.”

Her Dave glanced up at her, fingers sliding up to toy softly along the edges of his decks. Catching her eyes he mouthed his request. 'Kill him.'

' **Yes kill him Rose.'**

**'Kill him.'**

**'If you don't you'll loose him. Your Dave. The best Dave.'**

**'Lost in the dark and crushed between the gears.'**

**'The game will grind him into nothing.'**

That was not a sensible request. Who knew if they would alter the alpha-timeline even further through that iteration's death, or if this was just one more elaborate step in the clusterfuck that had killed her Dave in the first place.

Still, time was no longer Rose's concern and altering it bore little consequence to any of them. All she desired were her friends. One of the objects of that desire stood ready to murder his unsuspecting younger self if she did not intercede on his behalf; or be murdered in turn. If the younger paradox-clone succeeded, who knew if they would ever find Dave again. In this she and the horrorterrors were in accord. Rocking on her heels briefly Rose found her course of action – tentacles fanning out beneath her in an angry snarl of shadow and mass.

She had distorted and scrambled sprites. She had rammed her needles through the slippery flesh of consorts. The snail-like crunch of carapaces had been the symphony of her journey as she murdered foot soldiers and commanders alike. She had gone after Jack Noir with real and serious intentions of ending his life. However, for all that Rose had killed, she had never killed another human being. The hesitation to kill Dave lasted only a moment. It took some determination and tapping into the murky depths of her past. It was a memory that stood out knife-sharp over others of her childhood and it was easy to draw inspiration from.

The first time that she considered truly killing another human occurred on a Thursday. Sitting and enjoying the breeze from her open window, with the trees whispering cellulose-encoded secrets to one another. She scoured through image boards, seeking knitting patterns with cats on them. Her mother’s birthday was in a few weeks and nothing articulated spiteful affection quite like the rough hewn efforts of her hands. An intentionally dropped stitch here and there, miscounts in the lines, and her mother would be in possession of a staple of child-given-gifts. Perhaps even the best of Rose's many, tactical gestures of familial solidarity. Instead of finding the key to her gift-giving plans she found a time-lapse image set of a small cat being burned to death via some sort of accelerant. Not having expected it, she found an eyeful, the lines of agony of the being's small body burned into her subconscious. It was then that she understood that she could kill a person. Truly, that it was within her grasp to stop another being from existing, probably through violence. If she could find the owner of the anonymous space in which that small animal had been tortured to death she would not offer them the same fate. Perhaps a worse one. Possibly unparalleled savagery. All that stood out clear in her mind is that she could kill and she would probably enjoy it, given the right circumstances.

The hunt for the knitting pattern was put on hold for the rest of the day.

This Dave, in his way, was like that anonymous asshole on the internet. He was going to hurt something that she cared deeply for. This could not stand. Streaking over to him she got into his space, catching the look of horrified surprise that flashed over his face. Raising the thorns she planted a desperate kiss against his cheek, leaving a splatter of black gore.

“I’m sorry. You’re just making this worse. You have to stop.”

Harnessing the strength given to her by the cold she plunged her needle through the alternate’s neck. Gurgling and struggling he clawed at her fingers where they at clenched around his neck, hot blood slipping down from the holes left by the thorns. It was only a trickle. When she removed the object blocking the blood-flow then the damage would be real. She slid it out quickly, letting him fall to the ground, fingers rasping against his throat in a vain attempt to stop the hemorrhaging. He stilled more slowly than she would have hoped for, as her Dave observed in prickling silence. Leaving the body to join the rest of the soon-to-be-sand on the beach she stepped forward, arms held out with palms up. 

"We missed you." 

Dave stepped forward as well, crushing her close and then reaching out to snag Jade too -- who growled briefly and then crowded in close to nestle as well. Rose felt his lips move against her hair, and the chill of his breath. Glancing up carefully she found his eyes as white as the rest of theirs. "I can say definitively," he ventured while squeezing, "that we have irrefutably, irreconcilably, and truly lost the game. In the style of dudebros and chans over the mutli-verse I am declaring it thus." 

Jade poked at his side gently, ears tilted up and flirting with his cheeks. "Where have you been douchelord? I've been trying to find all of you for approximately forever." Her unoccupied arm tightened around Rose's waist. 

Dave shrugged a little. "Trying to unfuck the main branch that we came out of, a little. It was my dumbassery that got us killed in the first place. Only the more I moved around the worse it got. Then I died and I kept meeting iterations of myself and having to kill me before I went off to do the damnfool thing that I did in the first place." 

When had they all started to sound so tired? Rose rested her cheek along Dave's shoulder, stroking a hand up and down Jade's back contemplatively. Perhaps they were branded losers from the start. Patting Dave's back reassuringly she smiled up at him. "Come home with us. Curl up and be warm. It's hard to ever be warm here, but we've found ways." 

Jade chuckled at her side, eyes dancing and sending strange shadows along the planes of her face as she squinted in pleasure. 

Dave glanced between them, eyes tracing the arc of Jade's lead and settled his hands into his pockets, his timedecks and other strife equipment blinking out now that it was no longer required. "Whatever you say ladies. Lead on." 

*

Now that they had found Dave, time in the tower felt less specific. Light moved in and out of the windows. Dawn and dusk chased each other in an endless circuit. Most of the time Dave laid back, resting and watching the weather outside, sometimes observing as they kissed, other times walking out and through the frost to disappear into the hazy distance. If this was death, it was not terrible, save for the creeping madness. 

Sometimes, despite Jade's soft mouth, and despite Dave's sweetly clumsy humor, Rose could not think in linear patterns. Memories and feelings would bump into each other like bumper-cars in the most run down and dilapidated carnival ever held. Other times her body would spasm, tentacles roiling and flopping furiously. Jade and Dave would hold her down, sporting welts and bruises from impacts of her limbs and suckers that resided along the insides of the tentacles. Staring up at them she gnashed her teeth and seethed, imagining what it would be like to rend them open and drive her needles into their eyes and mouths.

It was not just her. Jade would curl up at her feet, limbs almost disjointed and ears restfully folded back, not answering when asked questions. Other times she would stand on the top of the tower, nude and flagrantly ignoring the cold, singing out long howling notes toward the sky. When coaxed to come back in she growled, ears pinned back and flashing over-sharp canines at them. 

Dave just seemed lost. Sometimes looking at him out of the corner of her eye, Rose felt like he was shifting - younger-older-broken-whole. If their purgatory was Jade's home then it was not a bad one. Better than the sea.They were so dear that she could almost pretend that the interior cavities of her body had not been filled with squirming limbs and ice. Being around them reminded her that she felt, and had felt very often before this place. Looking at Jade stalking through the snow outside and Dave sharpening one of his broken swords it was also hard to chase the image of symbols and clothing fluttering in the celestial ocean she had woken up in. It would be so easy to sleep there -- they could knot up and be together for always, imparting secrets to other stupid, doomed adolescents. 

*****

**  
**Jade rolled over, feet in Dave's lap and head pillowed in Rose's skirts.

"We should find John. I think things would be better if we did." 

It certainly was a sane suggestion. Considering it redirected her attention away from the pressure behind her eyes. They might burst. What would appear should they choose to do so was up for debate. Rose figured that it would be more tentacles, she did have a Lovecraftian theme going on with her bodily distortions. It could also be thorns, or geysers of the black liquid that seeped out of her ears and nose. 

"I don't have the faintest clue where I would even begin looking. I'm not much of a hunt-mistress if I cannot provide adequate direction. My apologies dearest." 

Dave snorted and Jade grumbled, flicking her ears. "I bet I could find him. It's just hard. He's even shiftier than Dave was. I wonder if he'll be grimdark like we are, or just dead." 

Their time player shrugged. "Maybe he lived." 

Rose shrugged. "He is stupidly lucky, often. It's a possibility. Before I went down he was still standing. I can't say for sure that he went down as well." 

Jade rolled over, tracing her fingers through Rose's skirts and flirting with the tentacles that slithered away from her inquisitive touches. "I wonder why we all turned out like this?" 

"Gamefuckery." 

"Natural inclination." 

Rose and Dave looked at each other and mirrored quirked eyebrow at each other. Smoothing her hands up along Jade's back she went to scratching her ears. "I say it is somewhat inevitable. Light players invert." 

Dave shook his head. "That doesn't account for us, though. Time doesn't invert grimdark. As far as I know, neither does space." 

Jade drew her tongue along the inside of Rose's wrist, clearing away some of the black fluid. "Maybe we go on to be horrorterrors." 

Rose nodded. "That had been my supposition. If you have beings that are not meant to die and should have infinite chances at success unless they are justly felled, it would make sense then that they are the whisperers of arcane lore to the next generation of said beings. Why waste all of that experience?  Knowledgeable elders make the reluctant more inclined to participate as there is some sort of structure in place that reinforces the insane reality in front of them. It follows why I woke up in the ocean that I did. I only visited the furthest ring once. Jade, where did you wake up?"

Rounding out her shoulders in discomfort Jade answered slowly. "In the stars. I was only thinking about finding the rest of you, so I did not question my surroundings. I just went." 

Dave tossed a squiddle plush between his hands, the soft whump of the beans stuffing it filling up the silence. "I never slept. Just got up from where I dropped and got to work. It seemed normal at first. Took a while to realize it was different from other times I unjustly died. No heartbeat."  Tossing the squiddle to Jade, he shrugged. Cuddling the plush against her chest, Jade studied the ceiling. "I think that we should go back to LOWAS. Dave, were you with us?" 

"Yeah." 

Jade huffed. "I thought so. Your weird static shit was bugging me. It makes it hard to think." 

"Sorry. You get that when too many timelines overlay and snarl. Particularly in places where a lot of decision-branches start." 

"Lots of things went down on John's world?" 

"More than you would think. The only place that it's worse is LOLAR."  Rose chuckled. It was fitting that her world would be a nest of complication. 

As they spoke their voices faded into the background and Rose could feel water lapping at her ankles. The whispers were no longer inviting. Instead they hissed sternly around her. 

**'Grab them Rose.'**

**'Take them.'**

**'It is time to come home now.'**

**'You have dallied long enough.'**

**'You are no longer alive.'**

**'You have things that you must attend to.'**

**'Stop Rose.'**

**'Return.'**

The room tilted and her eyes focused on Jade, who was very close to her face. "Stop. They're talking to you again. Don't listen. You have seizures if you pay too much attention. Stay right here with me. I need you to hold onto me, remember?" Jade drew her hand to rest up on the smooth leather of the collar still comfortably settled around her neck. Obligation neatly arranged into a physical shape. Rose groaned. "I think we should go today. It's getting hard to concentrate." 

Admitting it broke the spell of their tiny little tower-bastion. Someone had to do it. As their designated bringer of destruction it was only right that she be the one. 

* 

The organ howled above them, roiling black clouds blotting out the light that existed somewhere above the bank. Dave slouched close to them, hands jammed into his pockets and cape snapping in the irritable wind. Jade prowled around the pair of them, creating a physical barrier with her vigilance. "I think we have to go down to the denizen's lair. That was where he smelled the strongest. Could be that he actually spent time down there, but I don't know for sure." Tossing her head, she sighed. "Fuck it. Clip me in, I'm doing this." 

Rose clipped her lead on, activating the displacement element that allowed them to stretch impossibly far. Dave snorted in subdued amusement. "Here I thought the two of you were just kinky as fuck with the collar crap." 

Jade shot him a leering grin. "We are. Just practical as well. I don't want to get lost. I need someone to have a competent hand on me." 

Dave's mouth quirked up at one side in the tiniest facsimile of a smile he could manage. "If anyone is competent out of the bunch of us I would say it's probably Rose. No one that I would trust more to hold my leash." 

Nodding her assent, Jade winked at Rose and disappeared through the officious doorway ringed with ominous glyphs. Silence lay heavy for a period. 

"I don't think this is going to work." Dave's voice was tentative. 

"I don't either. But it makes her happy. Let her. I want her to be able to smile for as long as she can." Rose looped the leash around her wrist more securely. 

"Are we all going to go batshit? Because that's not how I want to go, y'know? I mean, I figured being dead is insult enough. We failed and then you stop. But now we're in this weirdass not-quite-dream, not dream-bubble apocalypse crap. Going crazy on top of that is thematically appropriate but also insulting as fuck." 

"Doesn't that fit with everything else that this game has ever done to us?"

Dave jammed his hands further into his pockets, tugging his hood up over his head to guard against the wind. "Point."

There was a violent tug against the leash and Rose lurched forward. Sprinting into the cavern she did not wait for Dave, she knew he would come.  Their footsteps made furious precussion as they wound through the labyrinths of Typhus' home. Rose did not spare a glance down, but the sense that the maze was filling with water dogged her. Dave made a disgusted noise and increased his pace. "Uh, I know urgent and whatever, but it's getting wet in here." Clumpy, black water sloshed around their ankles.  

"Oh. I thought that was just a hallucination." Rose redoubled her efforts, holding onto the lead like a lifeline. It was imperative that they find Jade.  If the neverwhere-sea that she woke up was expanding to fill up everything, she would not leave Jade floating in solitary. She could not drown alone, Rose simply would not stand for it. If this were simply a feature of John's planet, they would have to outpace it. 

Skidding through puddles and getting bodily dunked more than once, only to be hauled to higher ground Rose pushed and raced through the dark. Hauling Dave away from an edge she panted, panic and ice making her mind hazy. "What direction is the leash pointed?" Dave fumbled at it and pushed her around a corner. "This wa-OHFUCK." 

The rapid falloff of Dave's voice did not bode well. Rose surrendered herself to gravity, slipping and sliding down a cliff into the darkness below. As falls went it was neither earth-shattering nor overlong. Landing in a pool she broke the surface to find a drenched Dave hauling himself out onto the shore and Jade beaming at them, safe and dry. "I found something good. You two tripped one of the traps." 

"Ah." Paddling over Rose accepted Jade's hands and eased up, clothes clinging everywhere and tendrils pinned under her drenched skirt. Following Jade down a short hall they walked into an open space occupied by huge doors to one side. Through a side-entrance  a warm light flickered. Tugging at her hands Jade led the pair of them toward it. "I knew that there was a reason I smelled John. It's coming from here. And it isn't the same as the place I found you." If Jade had a tail it would be waving in unabashed glee. 

The rip in space shimmered and wiggled. Not trusting her powers of perception, Rose leaned over and murmured to Jade. "Confirm for me that I'm seeing a hand just inside of that portal?" 

The hand in question - healthy and with no gray malaise marring the skin emerged from the rip and gave them a thumbs up. Jade fist-bumped it, holding onto the fingers. "He's on the other side. We can go. We don't' have to go down into the water. I think it'll be better there." 

"It might be a trick." Rose's objection sounded weak even to herself. 

Dave stood behind them, dripping and contemplative. "Would it be any worse than here?" 

Jade arched a brow and looked at Rose. "Well? Hunt-mistress calls the shots." 

Rose was tired of feeling like she was being ripped between two places. Parts of her railed and screamed to be in the icy water where the rest of the horrorterrors were. The rest of her wanted nothing less. Beyond herself though, and the desire that had fueled her to this point there were her friends, torn down, hurt, and curious. They deserved more. 

"Let's do this. How can we not trust a disembodied arm that is willing to fistbump?" 

Jade smiled. "Dave, go first." 

Hesitating only a breath, Dave nodded. “Never say that I am not adventurous.” Grasping the hand, he hauled himself through the distortion. Dave's beat-up converse disappeared, the last trail of his cape slipping through and vanishing shortly thereafter. Jade pressed her nose against the soft spot behind Rose's ear, her lips tickling against the lobe. “If it ends bad, I want him to not have to suffer anymore. If it ends good, he deserves good things. So do you. Hold on tight to me okay? If we go, then we’re gonna go together.”

Rose pulled her close, kissing salt off of her mouth. “Thank you for finding me.”

Jade winked. “It’s what I do. I have a sense of where things are. C’mon. Be brave with me. What’s the worst that could happen? We end up in the furthest ring screaming?” Laughing, she dragged Rose toward the light. Pausing at the threshold, Rose wrapped her hands around Jade’s waist, swinging her through the portal. Taking her skirts in hand she stepped in after.

**_**

 

“ _We reject our earthly fires_

_Gone are days of land empires_

_Lungs transform to take in water_

_Cloaked in scales we swim and swim on_ ”

**\- Marquise DeSade d’Alternia**

 

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [We swim and swim on](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7588462) by [LumenInFusco](https://archiveofourown.org/users/LumenInFusco/pseuds/LumenInFusco)




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